For assimbya

[lodessa]

He’s always there.
I intetionally didn't say "Apollo", choosing the pronoun instead becaue I wanted to imply that for Cassandra he is THE he, above and beyond anyone else.
The misunderstanding, Cassandra thinks of it as a misunderstanding not a disagreement, is particularly ridiculous for this reason.
The previous sentence is the kernel that the whole thing was built around. It always seems a bit nonesensical to believe that Cassandra would be rejecting Apollo when she chose to be his priestess. So the initial point of this piece was that Apollo misunderstood her (and/or possibly she misunderstood him) and that she wasn't rejecting him so much as seeing a different meaning in his proposition and her refusal.
He’s always in her, in an all enveloping way that no one else could ever be.
Yes that's intentionally sexual with the "in". It was important to me to establish complete intimacy between them without the literal intimacy that she rejects.
He’s in her soul, in her very essence, and he may be a god but Cassandra thinks he’s ridiculous for feeling cheated out of his possession by her physical seclusion, when she’s utterly saturated with him.
I do like pointing out the validity of Cassandra's pespective and playing on the Greek representation of their dieties as big powerful and immortal but also childish human and petty.
She feels him pulsing in her veins with every pounding of her heart. He argues, if he’s so entwined with her, so intermixed with her existence, why does she push his body away from hers; what is the point of this separation of flesh?
Apollo's position is very much a archetypical masculine mentality... well really more of masculine argument because it's about rhetoric and not ideas
Cassandra sometimes thinks he knows he’s wrong though; because he could make her and he doesn’t.
I felt the need to put this sentence in because Apollo's godhood immediately gives him a sort of legitimacy so I needed something to balance it out with and I always have found it interesting that isntead of raping Cassandra (as his father would have done) Apollo chooses a passive agressive sulking.
She believes he has to know that it would taint the bond they do have, poison the power of his presence within her; of course, in an eternity of existence, he has to have made that mistake before.
Okay this is what I believe to be a blatant refrence to the Daphne and Apollo myth
So he argues, threatens, but does not cross the line she’s drawn in the sand. For this she loves him, for this his weight on her movements and thoughts, even his curse, is welcome and not something to be cast off.
I sort of enjoy the idea of Cassandra's rationale for not decrying Apollo when he curses her. It's a really awful curse but the idea here is that Cassandra feels the choice to curse her instead of violating her wishes is in some ways a consideration.
He says if she truly cherished the link like she claims she wouldn’t put silly walls up, but it’s precisely why she does.
This last line is just to clear up what the debate points are. Cassandra wants the respect of boundries that comes with her sexual withholding, and I think probably I was inserting modern day issues here around female identity and sexuality and the problem of respect in a sexual context.



Agamemnon has no such compunctions.
Starting with the proper name instead of the pronoun is neccesary to change subjects but it also starts of the contrast I wanted to create.
He leaves her core alone, content with the surface as the most that can be known of anyone.
The diction here was supposed to be ironic because "core" is often used in smut.
Cassandra has some contempt for that, for his crude baseness, but how can a man (king or no) compare to a god?
This indeirectly is supposed to imply that the reason for her withholding with Apollo is a respect for him not just a wish for respect from him.
He cannot, and Cassandra does not hate him as he presses her down into the rich sheepskins of his cabin bed and takes from her what she’s denied divinity. He is not divine, but earth and salt; the body is where he dwells, even as she feels Apollo quaver within her.
that last subordinant clause puts Apollo into the sexual act with Cassandra and Agememnon and I thought that was interesting because the implication is that she can never do anything, including have sex, without his involvment.
Let him have what earthly things he can take comfort in.
Agememnon is, in my mind, a man of simple pleasures and even though sex is no the best thing Apollo can get from Cassandra it is the best thing that Agememnon can get.
He means no evil, they never do, as he promises to make her a queen, as if that could repay her for the family and the home lost to her forever, and the life she cut out for herself snatched away.
This was a jab at patronizing masculinity and Agememnon's complete obliviousness to what is important to Cassandra
She grips the earth ware jar tighter as the nausea of premonition trying to spill forward pulses through her body, light trying to escape, but she chokes it back because she’s learned better.
Not only is Agememnon clueless to the current situation, Cassandra of course knows that his concept of making her his queen will cost him both of their lives. I liked the imagery of the prophecy as an umplesant and almsot uncontrolable urge like vomiting, because everyone else sees it that way in a sense and wish she'd just shut up/
No one likes the raven, and her words are warded by Apollo’s resentment, best to leave them for him alone, an attempt to explain she means no disrespect.
I liked the idea of Cassandra not just staying quiet because no one listens to her but also as a sign of subservience and acceptance to Apollo.
She sees blood and blood over that, over and over, and Clytemnestra like Eris, screeching at her brother’s side, blood splattered glory.
Okay, maybe I just have a fondness for Clytemnestra because I had to give her a godly allusion, even if it wa an unplesant one and I like the idea of Eris both starting and ending the series of events that lead to the war and their deaths.
She swallows the bile in her throat back down, feeling the reassuring sensation of Apollo within her and bends herself around Agamemnon on the outside.
I like both the idea that Apollo understands her supplication and responds, that they've sort of made up, and that she's sort of benevolently giving her body to Agememnon because she feels sorry for him.
He has so very little sun and wind left.
This last line is both a reference to the elemental baseness of Agememnon as referred to before and to of course his immenant death.

Comments

[assimbya.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, yes. I found myself nodding along with this constantly. I agreed so much with your portrayal of Cassandra in the story itself, but hearing your rationale for it makes me agree even more. You understand Cassandra's thought process wonderfully.

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I didn't even really know half of my rationale until I sat down to do this and had to think about it. A lot of it came out very instinctually I'm glad it was interesting to read it as well as write it.